Easier Said Than Done
by Ellenka
Summary: Six situations when Haymitch Abernathy hated his own advice, and the one when he might like it. All-in-one-shot.


**Disclaimer:** Everything you recognize from the Hunger Games trilogy belongs to Suzanne Collins.

**A/N: Dedicated to the great and awesome Howlynn**. Happy birthday, my dearest mentor! If I owned Haymitch, I'd give you a better present, but since I don't, I had to make the best out of the tidbits of angst he so graciously shared with me. Cheers! :D

* * *

><p><strong>Easier Said Than Done<strong>

**(Six situations when Haymitch Abernathy hated his own advice and the one when he might like it)**

„_I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now."_ - Charles Bukowski

* * *

><p><strong>001.<strong>

"Stay alive."

That's what I told myself after the hand of the reaper found my name. It was only a game after all. A game won by the last one who stayed alive.

/

I teamed up with the pretty not-so-stuck-up Townie who wore a golden mockingjay pin and was damn good with her darts, the poisoned little messengers of death. She never shot me, though.

Nobody wants to kill their district partner. People like to think there are some depths they won't sink into.

/

We were a good team, and in some other life, we could perhaps be…

...but we were in the Games and we thought we had_ to_ split up, because only one could stay alive.

/

Death found her soon after, in the grotesque form of long-beaked pink birds. I found her just as one of them pierced her neck and held her hand as she died. For me also, because only one could stay alive and it wasn't going to be her.

/

Her mockingjay pin was smeared with blood and I wiped it clean before her funeral-hovercraft came to retrieve her, letting its gold gleam bright and pure.

Briefly touching my fingers to it, I promised to stay alive for _her._

/

I fulfilled my oath, and I even managed to mock the Gamemakers along the way. I became a Victor, and I foolishly believed that this next life was worth staying alive for.

* * *

><p><strong>002.<strong>

"Stay alive."

That's what I told myself after I got out of the arena.

I thought I'd outwitted them. Beat them at their own Game. Ceased to be a plaything of the Capitol.

Wrong.

Everyone I wanted to return to died, just to remind me that the Capitol _always_ wins.

And there were still others they could kill to remind me that there was no escape for those reaped.

/

Out of the arena, the Games only just began.

The deep wounds I had to stab wept sickly-scented honey instead of blood, and the weapons that stabbed me were toys of flesh and plastic, and I never would have imagined that the word _plaything_ encompasses such terrible and depraved meanings.

/

I drank to cauterize, to wash, to burn away their dirt.

I drank to forget unless I forgot to drink.

Each blackout was a blessing and each awakening a suicide.

/

How I come I survived them all, just _stay alive_ for more?

And more and more and more, ad-fucking-nauseam?

* * *

><p><strong>003.<strong>

"Stay alive."

That's what I told each and every one of my tributes.

All of them obeyed, however unknowingly, and bought their free pass before they died inside. Life for a _life_, a fair price, wasn't it?

/

Yet they thought I'd betrayed them, failed them, abandoned them.

They died, but stayed alive in my head, with silent accusations frozen in their glaring dead eyes. I saved them from a fate worse than death, and they forever complained.

Ungrateful little bastards.

I tried to drown them all in liquor, but they swam and swam there, miserable little spirits shining like corpse-candles.

Two… four… six… eight… ten… twelve…

No Victors for Twelve but those who returned in wooden caskets, and I stayed alive, like a miserable _tribute_ to them all.

* * *

><p><strong>004.<strong>

"Stay alive."

That's what I told each and every one of the little Victors who sought my help after finding out what victory really means.

The kids who _thought_ they'd made it. Who didn't know that the canon-blast announcing the death of their last opponent tolled their own passage to never ending hell. Where you are reaped over and over again. Without the E.

/

They all loved and hated me for it. They had no better choice.

/

But mostly, we hated together. We hated _them_.

The Capitol. They thought they'd win every time, and we needed to find some way to prove them wrong.

Slowly, we spun the fuses and gathered the kindling, but we still needed a spark.

/

I stayed alive, a mentor to the drunken fifth column of dwindling hopes. Some days were longer than lifetimes and it took too damn _many_ of them.

* * *

><p><strong>005.<strong>

"Stay alive."

That's what I told the girl and the boy, soon to be ghosts number 47 and 48, and they made a rather embarrassing attempt to attack me for my trouble.

Bless their spunky little hearts.

Especially the girl's. Her name was Katniss Everdeen.

/

I thought I'd drowned everything in liquor by then. Actually, I did.

But then she wrestled her way to the stage and set the sea of oblivion on fire.

/

Good spirits burn well.

/

She was _probably_ the first female volunteer Twelve had to offer, and she'd volunteered to save her sister. When she appeared on the train, she miraculously wore _HER damn pin_.

However much I drank, it wouldn't go away... it was still there, once twice four times swimming before my eyes. Golden mockingjay mocking me from beyond the grave that couldn't contain _her_ and wouldn't take me.

/

I knew the new girl would stay alive, but not by taking the easy way out.

She was worth waiting for.

/

And when she and the boy - who tried so hard to stay alive by dying for her - clasped hands and swallowed their berries, their poisoned little message of defiance, a spark was born. Golden and gleaming like that bloody mockingjay pin, and I promised it would stay alive.

No matter the cost.

* * *

><p><strong>006.<strong>

"Stay alive."

That's what I told Katniss after the Quell, after the war, after the rebellion that purged everything and everyone. The time for rebirth, time to be truly alive, finally arrived. It wouldn't have happened without this insufferable, inconsiderate, inexorable, _incredible_ wisp of a girl.

The girl who changed everything and burned to ashes while she was at it.

/

She achieved the greatest victory of all, yet she though she'd failed. However hard she fought, she lost the very cause she's fought for in the first place.

/

Her sister was dead, perhaps as an ultimate punishment for ultimate victory, a proof that the cost is _always_ too high.

Katniss got to live, but _without her sister,_ and she never wanted that.

_Was it even fair to urge her to stay alive?_

She hated me for doing it, and I hated myself, but I had to do it. If I didn't bring one true Victor home, I'd have failed, and I couldn't bear any more failure.

/

But she never listened, never even acknowledged me, and each time I lost my patience with her inertia, I sought my own.

At the bottom of the bottle, the safest place where every loss can be found.

/

So what changed, then?

* * *

><p><strong>001.<strong>

The boy has returned.

The miraculous resurrection-artist that warmed the oxymoronically icy heart of the Girl on Fire. One look into her eyes after his arrival was enough to confirm that Katniss will stay alive after all.

Finally my last two tributes are home.

/

The time of silver parachutes is past and they can make it on their own now.

I crack open a bottle.

This time, to _celebrate_

Then why does the poison taste as disgusting as _ever_?

/

Both on the way in and on the way out.

/

The more the sadder.

/

The bottle I fell asleep with is empty, empty but for traces of poison just like the heads of the Capitol customers that are _past past past_…

/

I wake, slashing at whatever intangible, invisible ghosts that may hover nearby, _just in case_, and search for a new bottle.

Hair of the dog.

/

Half of it is gone before I realize I started drinking it.

Might as well be a whole stinking pelt.

Might as well choke on the _victory._

/

Finally, victory.

/

I saw to it. Saw to them winning. The boy and the girl. They_ both_ stayed alive. I won.

/

But they don't need me anymore.

/

Nobody does.

/

/

/

How long has it been?

/

Doesn't matter. _They_ don't need me anymore. And they were the last ones. The very _last_.

/

They may not need me, but looks like they do _care_.

Definitely enough to barge in, to open the blinds and to bring something undoubtedly delicious-smelling that makes me want to throw up. And they holler my name as if someone's life depended on it. Especially Katniss.

Her voice pierces my brain like a pin... like a dart... like that beak piercing _her_ neck…

It fucking hurts. I cower at the table.

"Shuddup," I mutter after figuring out that the effort of shutting her up might be worth it.

My little Mockingjay with her dulcet tones might have liberated the whole damn Panem , but she should know better than to sing when her mentor is having a killerheadache.

"You can't go on like this, Haymitch."

_You are one to talk, Sweetheart. Refused to leave your armchair for fucking months and now that you have your lifeline back, you gonna bugger _me_?_

"Got any better idea?" I mutter from the relative safety of the tabletop area fenced off by my forearms. I can still hear her, but at least the damn light isn't burning my eyes there.

Katniss grabs a fistful of my hair and yanks my head up to face her. "Here's some advice, Haymitch."

Under her heavy frown, her eyes hold a glimmer of the old Girl on Fire. My little star more radiant then the sun.

"Stay alive," she snarls.

_That's my girl._

"'Kay, Sweetheart. Just lemme sleep on it."

Just before my senses hit station oblivion again, I see the corner of her mouth curl into a smile.

/

The next dawn might be worth waking for. The next life might be worth staying alive for.

_Isn't that what I wanted all along?_


End file.
